I just finished up Watch Dogs 1 and Aiden Pearce's (main character) appearance really struck me. I think he looks like a terrorist/mass shooter.
Watch Dogs is far from my first open world game but this is the first time that I have felt this about a playable character. I have been playing the Grand Theft Auto series since PS2 for reference.
I wondered if it was because of the graphics but I never felt this way playing Grand Theft Auto V, which is admittedly more stylised.
The issue, I believe, is mainly with the character design. From GTA V, Michael looks like a mob boss and Trevor looks like a homeless redneck. Each of them wear casual clothing. They have very distinct looks and don't look mysterious at all, even though they are hardened criminals.
Aiden, however, is an incredibly average and undistinctive Caucasian male. He wears a trench coat and baseball cap. When he takes out his gun, he pulls a mask up to obscure his face. He's meant to look like a vigilante but he actually looks scarier than the psychotic main characters from GTA V.
He looks, to me, less like a vigilante and more like a mysterious mass shooter. You cannot see it in the GIF but he's hiding a handgun behind his back. He actually moves like that in regular gameplay. With that, just playing the game normally, I got strong terrorist vibes.
But never was that feeling more apparent than when I went on my first rampage with a high powered assault rifle.
Now you might be thinking "of course going on a rampage will make the character you are playing as seem like a psycho". But unlike other characters, Aiden Pearce actually looks like the real deal. The act of rampaging was just the missing puzzle piece and once I completed that puzzle, I could never look at him the same way again. It fit him far too well.
On top of that, you can actually hear and see NPCs making phone calls to the police while fleeing Aiden. These phone calls sound eerily similar to the phone calls we hear on the news about mass shootings every month.
It sort of unnerved me and took the fun out of rampaging because I could not stop thinking about it. It even affected my regular gameplay. The surveillance photos from the Toronto shooter this week did not help.
What do you all think? Am I the only one who feels this way?
Watch Dogs is far from my first open world game but this is the first time that I have felt this about a playable character. I have been playing the Grand Theft Auto series since PS2 for reference.
I wondered if it was because of the graphics but I never felt this way playing Grand Theft Auto V, which is admittedly more stylised.
The issue, I believe, is mainly with the character design. From GTA V, Michael looks like a mob boss and Trevor looks like a homeless redneck. Each of them wear casual clothing. They have very distinct looks and don't look mysterious at all, even though they are hardened criminals.
Aiden, however, is an incredibly average and undistinctive Caucasian male. He wears a trench coat and baseball cap. When he takes out his gun, he pulls a mask up to obscure his face. He's meant to look like a vigilante but he actually looks scarier than the psychotic main characters from GTA V.
He looks, to me, less like a vigilante and more like a mysterious mass shooter. You cannot see it in the GIF but he's hiding a handgun behind his back. He actually moves like that in regular gameplay. With that, just playing the game normally, I got strong terrorist vibes.
But never was that feeling more apparent than when I went on my first rampage with a high powered assault rifle.
Now you might be thinking "of course going on a rampage will make the character you are playing as seem like a psycho". But unlike other characters, Aiden Pearce actually looks like the real deal. The act of rampaging was just the missing puzzle piece and once I completed that puzzle, I could never look at him the same way again. It fit him far too well.
On top of that, you can actually hear and see NPCs making phone calls to the police while fleeing Aiden. These phone calls sound eerily similar to the phone calls we hear on the news about mass shootings every month.
It sort of unnerved me and took the fun out of rampaging because I could not stop thinking about it. It even affected my regular gameplay. The surveillance photos from the Toronto shooter this week did not help.
What do you all think? Am I the only one who feels this way?
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